"Come!" It's a positive word, connoting an invitation to join in a venture with someone. It is certainly more positive than the word, "Leave!" And yet, one cannot do one without also doing the other. In order to come, one has to leave. Leaving and coming are two parts of the same action.
We find this leave/come dynamic all through scripture, starting in the creation narrative. "A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one" (Genesis 2:24). In order to start a new family, one has, in some form or other, to leave the old one. The Abrahamic covenant begins with this directive: "Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father's family, and go to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1). In order to establish a new nation, Abram had to leave his familial home. It is interesting to note that he was given no definitive destination. Abram was told exactly what and who to leave, but the details of where he was going were left deliberately vague. Abram would have to trust YHWH with the specifics.
This is similar to Jesus's call to the disciples. When Jesus invited Simon and Andrew to come and follow him, they left their fishing nets behind. James and John left their boat and their father when they heard the call of Jesus. Fishermen in the first century were not well-off by any means, but at least they had a means of putting food on the table. Jesus's call necessitated their leaving behind even that meagre livelihood. For what? Jesus made no promise of stable incomes, higher wages, less hours, or more benefits. There was only the strange mention of retraining them in some new form of fishing, and who knew what that meant. Jesus called the disciples to follow him, nothing more. In other words, Jesus called them to himself.
A few years later, when Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem with his disciples, on a road which would soon lead to his death, he acknowledged what his followers had left behind. "I assure you that everyone who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or property, for my sake and for the Good News, will receive now in return a hundred times as many houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and property - along with persecution. And in the world to come that person will have eternal life." (Mark 10:29-30, NLT). Yes, they had given up families and places to live, but they had gained a new community, brothers and sisters in The Way. And this family would keep on growing, sharing houses and property and belongings with each other, sticking together even through persecution.
The church (ekklesia = call out) is made up of those who are called out, those who leave their way of life in order to walk with Jesus and with each other. Every time we gather together as the church community, we must displace ourselves (leave) in order to join in the togetherness we share with those who follow Jesus. "The paradox of the Christian community is that people are gathered together in voluntary displacement ... The Gospels confront us with this persistent voice inviting us to move from where it is comfortable, from where we want to stay, from where we feel at home." [1]
It is always easier to stay embedded in our comfort zone than to do the hard work of nurturing relationships and building community, but Jesus calls us to leave our individualism for the sake of solidarity. When we join with Jesus, we are joined to the lives of others whom God has called, and many of them will be those with whom we might not naturally associate. It will be uncomfortable, I guarantee it, and we will be tempted to initiate displacements that we can control and manage, but we are called to accept the displacements that Jesus chooses for us. "When we form a Christian community, we come together not because of similar experiences, knowledge, problems, color, or sex, but because we have been called together by the same God. Only God enables us to cross the many bridges that separate us." [2]
Jesus's call to come and be part of the ekklesia means that we have to be willing to leave even those places which are deemed proper in order to embrace that which society calls improper. This is the movement of humility exemplified by Jesus himself. "The mystery of the incarnation is that God did not remain in the place that we consider proper for God but moved to the condition of a suffering human being... Jesus Christ is the displaced Lord in whom God's compassion becomes flesh. In him, we see a life of displacement lived to the fullest. It is in following our displaced Lord that the Christian community is formed." [3]
Displacement plus togetherness equals community. If we truly want to call ourselves the ekklesia, the called out ones, then we must be willing to be displaced in big and small ways and to forsake our places of comfort and safety for the sake of Christ. The first directive Jesus gave his disciples was to embrace disruption and displacement. The second one was to follow him wherever that may lead. The call is the same today.
Leave. Come. Follow. Join. Learn. Love. Abide. Repeat.
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1. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Donald P. McNeill, Douglas A. Morrison, Compassion (Image; Doubleday, 1983), 61.
2. Compassion, 81.
3. Compassion, 62-63.
Image from bluestudyministry.com
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